I recently watched a documentary on Laos called The Most Secret Place on Earth.
It was about how Laos was used by the Americans in the war, and in particular how an airstrip set up just outside Vientiane was at one point in time the busiest airport in the world with planes continually landing every 2 minutes on bombing runs.
One of the most sickening things they mentioned was how the bombers would drop their bombs indiscriminately if they could not reach their target as they could not land with them.
Another fascinating part of the story is how some journalists uncovered where some Hmong people were living and hiding since the end of the war. There are images of these people in tears, thinking that these journalists were finally the Americans had come back to rescue them.
Interesting stuff, and it reveals how naive I still am about the history of the country.
October 11, 2011 at 12:24 am
Is very difficult to try to explain all that story in barely 40 minutes. They made the doco right when a lot of material was just declassified and accessed to a lot of private stuff. Great job.
Probably they have been the first foreigners allowed to film the air-strip, but not to visit the base. I guess they have paid a good money to get there (the guy who drives the car is not a nobody in Laos), and a fortune for the chopper, but they got it (drinking BeerLao by the Mekong, I’ve met at least three reporters mad to to get in the base).
I went there with a friend few months after they shot, but we where turned back in the last barrier; just 50 meter from the strip (when we passed the first barrier was nobody around, then we saw a guy, some 200 meters away, running to us. .We kept driving).
About these Hmongs, that’s a real sad story. If you see the whole footage of the group (is somewhere in YouTube), you can see a guy with a satellite phone. They have been forced to that situation for interests in the other side of the Ocean and for the lack of interest to find a solution at this side.